Love is...five people, five stories for Valentine's Day

I remember the time I asked her to go to a party and she said no, then turned up with someone else. I remember seeing her kiss him too. I remember the time an old boyfriend appeared. And how deep that day cut back then. The shivering sense that my skin had been flayed off. The conjoined realisation that I was already a lost cause. The constant ache to be noticed. And the fear of it too.

Those days and nights, I can still feel the mark of them somewhere deep in me.

But most of all I remember the first time she said yes.

And then.

Kisses in the dark. The taste of tobacco and wine on her lips. The dog we were walking discreetly looking the other way. Afternoons in cavernous, echoing cinemas, the two of us the only ones there. I could tell you nothing about the films we saw. I wasn't paying attention.

And time passed and we stayed together and we settled down and we moved around and we came back to where we started and we had children and we argued and we fell back in and we got older. And I wonder what she still sees in me. But then I could never work that out in the first place.

And we got older ...

And other people got older. And people we knew, people we loved, died. And that was a different kind of hurting. But on it went. Soon other people were being born. New generations. And that's when you realise that you were not the first to share kisses in the dark and you won't be the last and your story - that story you always tell - is not so very special, not so unique. It's just what happens. It's really very ordinary.

Even so, that's not how you remember it. It didn't feel ordinary. The memories of those days are burned into you like a brand. This is who we were and how we got here. And here is good. Here is fine.

I remember the last time she kissed me. Not so very long ago. Now I'm waiting for the next one.

"All stories are love stories." Robert McLiam Wilson

TEDDY JAMIESON

I have a theory that 25 is a dangerous age for women. University is behind you and you've climbed the first steps up the career ladder and that's when your bodyclock catches up with you. It's sneaky - nothing as unsubtle as making you yearn for a baby. No, what happens is that, like a witch's curse in a fairy tale, the next man you meet is transformed into The One, regardless of how unsuitable he is.

You may be lucky enough to land a good 'un, a man with a true heart who wants to love and care for you. But, if you're like me and many of my female friends, you are more likely to end up with The Bad Boyfriend, the kind of person you'd have run a mile from a few years earlier but who now seems like the answer to your dreams.

My BB was funny, clever and talented and seemed to adore me. Looking back he clearly couldn't believe his luck: he wore dodgy ill-fitting tweed suits and knitted ties and his teeth were a bomb site. No matter, he was a fixer-upper, I thought, and took him shopping and to a dentist.

We had a couple of fun years together before it began to dawn on me that far from finding Prince Charming, I'd kissed the biggest frog in the swamp. I found out he'd built up a mountain of debt only when two sheriff officers arrived to poind our belongings for unpaid parking fines. When I confronted the BB, he sheepishly produced a bin bag full of unopened letters from irate bank managers and creditors - including the dentist.

Worse was to come as he took to the drink, disappearing for days at a time and trailing home with idiotic excuses I tried to believe. I should have got out earlier, but I'd already invested so much time and energy on him trying to turn him into the man he could never hope to be. After all, he was The One, wasn't he? I ignored my friends who shook their heads sadly at the disaster that was my unravelling life. I don't know what made me wake up; I'd just had enough one day, and with great sadness and heartbreak called time on our four years of highs and, increasingly, lows.

At the age of 29, I felt washed up. Ridiculous, of course, but I was looking at life through the prism of a broken heart. I was convinced I'd never find love again. And then, of course, I did.

Michael is generous, honest and kind, as well as being funny, talented and clever. We married 15 years ago and have an adorable eight-year-old son. In a way I should thank the BB - if it weren't for his monumental awfulness I wouldn't have been drawn to his exact opposite, my husband and my true love.

MAGGIE RITCHIE

WHEN I arrived home from school it was waiting on the mantelpiece, a crisp white envelope with my name and address written on the front in looping handwriting.

The postmark was a giveaway, but that didn't matter a jot: it was Valentine's Day and I had received my first ever card. I thought I would burst with joy.

I ripped open the envelope to reveal a picture of a woman with pink hued (some might say rose-tinted) heart-shaped spectacles. It had echoes of Sara Moon meets Pierrot (hugely popular at the time) which to my young eyes seemed terribly grown up and sophisticated. Inside was the inscription: "To my girl."

The card - as I had quickly deduced from the postmark - was from my grandpa. My gran would have bought it and posted it, but I'm certain it is his writing.

I was 10 when he passed away and my recollection of the years he was alive is a frustrating hotchpotch of jumbled snapshots as if viewed through muslin cloth or a grimy window. The memories flit and flutter. No matter how hard I try to pin them down they always evade my grasp.

This much I can recall. His favourite chair was on the left hand side of the fire place. He always had neatly pressed slacks. When it came to fly fishing his knowledge was encyclopaedic. His competitive spirit at board games was rivalled only by my own. He showed me how to make perfume from water and flower petals. His tipple on special occasions was Famous Grouse.

I remember him lying quiet and still in a hospital bed after a stroke. It felt a prolonged period, but probably wasn't. The elasticity of time plays tricks on the mind.

The afternoon before he died I told my mum that he squeezed my hand as I talked to him. If I'm honest now, I don't think he did.

Some 30 years have passed since that card arrived and I have often stared at those three words written inside, marvelling at this precious trace left behind. It is a reminder of the fragility of life but also its enduring bonds. It never fails to make me smile.

SUSAN SWARBRICK

MY parents were married for 10 days short of 66 years. My elder sister has been wed for 31 years. Matrimony runs in the family. Jan and I have been a couple since December, 1991. And we have just celebrated our third wedding anniversary.

In the two decades up to January, 2012, we had been through a lot together, as you would expect. We had bought and sold two flats, and moved into a house out of town. We had each lost a parent. We had seen Jan's daughter, Jill, and son, Neil, married, in 1997 and 2007 respectively. We had seen them both start families, in Jill's case in New Zealand.

Twenty eventful years as a couple. And then we gave ourselves just three weeks to plan and hold our wedding.

It's my fault. We were content, and settled. But I had always wanted a wife as well as a partner. I wanted us to commit in public as well as in private. Over the years I had suggested marriage a few times, but not with any great persistence, and Jan, who had been married before, had never shown any great enthusiasm for the idea. The last time I proposed was on Valentine's Day, 2011. But this time the answer was: "We'll see."

I'd played the family card. Jill, her husband Anson, and their seven-year-old son, Callum, were coming to visit the following Christmas. Wouldn't it be nice, I'd argued, to be married on the one occasion we'd have the whole family around us?

The concept was then largely forgotten about. Until, in early December of that year, I decided to take some positive action.

I phoned our local registrar's. I found out what paperwork was needed, and realised we had it all to hand. And there was a slot available: the first Saturday in January, two days before Jill and her family were due to fly back to New Zealand.

Somewhat to my surprise, Jan agreed. We were to be wed in three weeks.

Neil, his wife Lucy, and their boys Kai and Jack were pleased. Jill became an enthusiastic wedding planner. The next 20 days were packed with choosing and buying rings, finding a venue for the reception, ordering the catering, buying outfits, organising flowers, a cake, a car, inviting friends and family - a whirlwind of activity for a couple in the autumn of their days.

And so, on January 7, 2012, 20 years and two weeks after getting together, we were hitched. Mingling with the throng at the reception, it came to me that the people I had thought of as relatives of my partner were now brothers-in law, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces. I was a husband, a stepfather (though that counts for naught with adult offspring) and a father-in-law.

And... I have grandsons.

In 20 minutes or so, I had gone from "Drew" to "Grandpa". I like that. No, scratch that. I love that.

DREW ALLAN

LOVE has always been confounded, conflicting - and especially confusing. From the age of seven. Christine Bain, who'd come to Johnstone from Stirling for her summer holidays every year to stay with her Uncle Albert had blonde Shirley Temple curls and the ability to break hearts. Especially mine.

We played together every day - oh, how I was desperate to get out of the house to meet her at the corner of Thomson Avenue, the anticipation as sweet as the strawberry jam in my Milanda-wrapped piece my mother had prepared. But each day I also carried with me a sense my feelings for her would never be reciprocated. Then one afternoon, at the back of Uncle Albert's close, Christine Bain kissed me. Apropos nothing. And she giggled. And my accepting cheek turned red as jam. And I was in Heaven.

Until the very next day.

The news arrived that was to throw my little crew-cutted head into turmoil, to trash my tiny little soul. "Christine Bain has been down the park kissing Stevie McClelland," a pal informed, soto voce, before adding the killer line; "On the lips." What? How could a female be so fickle? And with Stevie Mac? It was clear he had no interest in girls, even then.

The impact was resounding. I determined never to let myself be blinded by beauty and big baby blues again. Ever. But I failed. Aged 12, for three years I took the slow bus to school so I could gaze at Jeanette Woods (another blonde). She never so much as acknowledged me. How could she not tell that from beneath the hood of my Krazy House duffel coat my desperate eyes were locked on her in the way Adonis looked at Aphrodite?

The confusion continued. Aged 15, while I dreamt of one day meeting Olivia Newton John, I found myself besotted with yet another blonde. And during a moment of romantic courtship at a bus shelter in Paisley, the rather daring young lady decided to take the relationship onto the next level. "You can put your hand up my jumper," she said, coquettishly. And I did, mostly out of curiosity rather than desire, it has to be admitted. But at the point of contact with her growing ardour, her hand slapped hard against my face. As I threw her an astonished stare she giggled in explanation: "I thought I saw my brother coming!"

And so the struggle to understand women's intentions continued, through many relationships, and a lot of years with the Blonde who, always, declared she never wanted to get married. Until we split up and she declared she had been waiting for me to ask the entire time.

Can't - and probably never will - understand the fairer sex completely. Pop poet Bernie Taupin agreed with this notion when he wrote, "There are women, women and . . . some hold you tight. While some leave you counting, the stars in the night."

BRIAN BEACOM